Starseed Pilgrim is a game about tending a symphonic garden, exploring space, and embracing fate. You are a gardener, tending to empty noise and empty space to fill them both with colour. You are a refugee, building your own world away from the spreading darkness.

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"Advice for playing Starseed Pilgrim: As long as you still have questions, continue." – Jonathan Blow

"Unfortunately, you cannot talk about Starseed Pilgrim, because that would spoil it for so many others. There’s unwritten rules at play. But it’s so open to discussion between two or more journeyers who find themselves at similar junctions." – Indie Statik

"It’s OK to feel lost, it seems to suggest, because it’s the only way to feel the intoxicating effect of discovery. I became so angry with Starseed Pilgrim because it purposely allows you, encourages you even, to feel lost.– Game Church

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Starseed Pilgrim is a game about tending a symphonic garden, exploring space, and embracing fate.

You are a gardener, tending to empty noise and empty space to fill them both with colour.
You are a refugee, building your own world away from the spreading darkness.
You are an explorer, discovering new places, new rules, and new fascinations.

I'm ok with the arty-ness of the game. I've played my fair share of games with ambiguous floating meaningful text.

The game has an interesting idea for a puzzle and interesting variations on tsaid puzzles. BUT the game is too random for it to be fun or completable. Completing a "level" to bring seeds back to the "overworld" to explore is fine.

Getting to the challenges in each level is bloody impossible.

Here's why:- After the first 1-3 seeds, the seeds you get are entirely random. Only restriction to this keeps you from getting the same seed twice in a row.- How 2 of the 6 seeds grow is semi random. That's a third of what you have to work with and PLENTY enough to mess up your best laid plans.- Where the keys AND THE ALTERNATE EXIT FOR THE CHALLENGES spawn is completely random. This is the clincher. There is no way you can even BEGIN to formulate a stratagy if you don't know where you're going. You can only do the same basic thing over and over hoping you pointed yourself in the right direction. That is insanity.

Having only one of those randomized would make the game challenging but doable. But Starseed Pilgrim has all three and the end result is tedious, annoying, frustrating, and just not fun.

A great example of how to teach incredibly esoteric gameplay mechanics organically, Starseed Pilgrim does a great job of rewarding your curiosity and forcing you to re-evaluate your tactics, all while putting out a slightly foreboding, minimalist atmosphere.

I think this is one of those game you like or you don't. What answers I found during my very short time were enough to suggest that they would not provide a sufficient reward for my efforts. Worth a shot I think if the description peaks your interest but I can't recommend it personally.

I loathe this game. I got taken in by the lavish praise it received when it was first released. The graphics are meh, the sound is okay, the control-reaction isn't great, and the gameplay is grindy and aggravatingly luck-based.

Starseed Pilgrim is pretty great. It's super laid back (most of the time) and it's one of the few games that I'd ever describe as feeling truly mysterious. It was good to play while watching TV, or good as its own activity. I still don't think I've really figured out all of its mysteries, but I'm also still interested.

A great game with great mechanics. Don't expect much of a narrative...what exists of one is pretty obtuse. The fun comes from gaining an understanding of how each seed works and interacts with it's environment. I found immense pleasure in gradually becoming a "master gardener" of sorts, learning to plan ahead, and staying well out of reach of the mysterious black void.

There seem to be a lot of pretentious reviews for this game on the internet, which really put me off. Despite my criticisms, the dev gave me a copy through twitter. Stripped of the pretty words others seem to lavish on it, it’s basically a platformy puzzler you play at your own pace which you’ll either hate, grow bored of quickly, or love. There is nothing innately pretentious about the game itself which makes me wonder why indie game reviewers try so hard.

In Starseed Pilgrim, you collect “seeds” to build block formations to explore your central hub and unlock other pilgrims. To collect seeds, you must venture into a place where the darkness of space is actively devouring everything. The darkness of space, if you jump into it, inverts the playing field, making those solid blocks into empty space and vice versa. You want to collect seeds and keys in order to get back home and use them. You can’t grow anything in the darkness of space so thought must be invested beforehand.

The game largely leaves you to your own devices, so you’re free to explore whatever you can reach. Different coloured seeds grow into different shapes and sometimes do special things, like provide seeds in the darkness of space or allow you to jump higher. Certain levels have rules. It’s up to you to figure out what does what but nothing is so obtuse that it’s impossible.

If you find peace in repetition and enjoy setting your own goals, I’d say buy this game, otherwise you won’t get much out of it. And on the front of accessibility, the game has colour blind mode on by default and supports scaling. I was appreciative of both.

In Starseed Pilgrim, the first thing you learn is that you can break blocks and plant seeds. You are then set upon a large, earthy block suspended in white void and expected to use your fresh and limited knowledge of this universe so far to explore away from your starting point. Different seeds grow at different speeds, shapes, directions, and wonderful sounds. You plant away and start to climb, sure without being sure that there must be something else in this vast emptiness besides yourself.

There is a challenge to the exploration, discovery, and successful return home – enough that even with the game's insistence on minimal to absent guidance, you'll want to make it at least once.

However, it is after surmounting this first hurdle that I no longer felt compelled to play, because the more I saw of Starseed Pilgrim, the more I recognized it as a solid proof of concept rather than a complete and satisfying game. Allow me to explain.

The blocks, the seeds, and the void are simple components: easily understood with some trial and error. These same elements, however, are also samey to a fault and become bland with overexposure. While the simplicity of the core mechanic is both visually and sonically polished, the simplicity of the game that contains it is lonely and boring; it feels incomplete. You will make your way from base block to base block with practiced efficiency, but there is less and less of a reason for you to do so. Exploration continues to reveal more of the same, as if the game had something against variety in design.

I have heard that, with some doing, you can indeed find the novel experiences that I expected as the rewards for my progress. I'm afraid that I just don't have the patience. I enjoy exploration for exploration's sake, but when a game tells me nothing and shows me even less, should I really be expected to keep at it?

Starseed Pilgrim is the kind of game where I can't give it a negative review, because it means I don't, "get it," and at the same time, I can't give it a positive review, because its author(s) were so pre-occupied tripping over itself in attempts to be thought-provoking, they seem to have forgotten to include... content. There's symbolism and artistic metaphor, but they're so vague and caved-in under so much repeatition that few, if any, players can actually give them even a minimal identity. There's straightforward gameplay with puzzles to be solved and rewards to be had, but the biggest puzzle is solved the instant the player has planted a seed of each color for the first time and collected a key. The rewards for success are nebulous and consist mostly of being faced with the same puzzle again, while the penalty for failure is also being faced with the same puzzle again. It's essentially entertainment for art-game snobs, who want a reason to laugh at the riff-raff that don't appreciate it the "right" way, and for defeatists who are only comfortable playing in a world where all their actions are doomed to begin with. Certainly, people other than the above mentioned types can enjoy Starseed Pilgrim, but the intentional kind of enjoyment this game produces isn't about trial and error puzzle-play (like House of Dead Ninjas), exploration of a metaphor-strewn environment (like The Path), or even some combination of the two (such as Limbo). Basically, this goes into the same category as "Vinnie Vole's Existentialist Nightmare."

Exploration, discovery, mystery, wonder, suprise. Just some of the brand of adjectives that seemingly every review of this game coos. And true enough, the game does have that. For the first couple of hours I was glued to the screen while I solved the metapuzzle that is Starseed Pilgrim. The puzzle is to understand the game's mechanics, and wonderful and clever mechanics they are. The problem: the game does nothing afterwards. In the solving of the mechanics, you've already seen all of what the game has to offer. Those nouns above comprise about 10% of your playtime, The rest: repetition. With its involving atmosphere and great use of sound, as well as said mechanics, I was expecting Starseed Pilgrim to evolve into a masterpiece. What a shame.

This game is amazing! I'll warn you, it can be pretty hit or miss, but if it's a hit, it's a unique experience that you don't want to deprive yourself! I wish I could tell you all about it, but I can't. I can tell you plenty of things its like, but I can't really describe it except for in the very abstract. And my abstract description is that it is a game about learning. There is little in the way of obvious instruction. It's up to you to figure it out. When I first looked at screenshots, I saw random squares in patterns that were aesthetically pleasing. Now I look at them and see order. I see several levels of order. To tell you more about the game would be to rob you of the experience of transitioning from seeing order to seeing chaos as you play this game.

As for things its like, I would say it is like...

* Learning a new language* Getting lost in a maze, and that joy when you finally find your way out* David Bowie's song, "Moss Garden"* Discovering that the world is round, firsthand* The NES game, Wario's Woods* Your first kiss* The "Aha!" moment that you get when figuring out a puzzle* The 11th Hour, by Graeme Base

If you play this game, I can't promise you you'll love it. It is the sort of game that resonate with some people, but will just not be everyone's cup of tea. What I can tell you is that if it resonates with you, you will REALLY enjoy it, and might find it the most worthwhile game you've bought in a long time.

This game is a simulation of trying to leave the house when you're minutes late for an event you don't want to attend, and realizing after you locked the front door that you've left something important inside. If you like that feeling, you'll like this game.

I gave it an hour, I read up on other reviews, and I'm sorry, but this game just doesn't have much going on, and if you "have to experience it for yourself", then I'd remind you that you can say the same thing, but start your sentence with: "Man, that porta-potty is terrible, but really, you have to....." yeah. That.If someone can give me a compelling reason to continue meandering through a bland game that urges you to think strategically about placement of pseudo-random adjustments to your environment, while having limited time to think about it, for the reward of: umm, doing it more? Perhaps I could be convinced to try it again. But it's not likely.

You know games like Rogue Legacy or One-Way Heroics or other (usually procedurally-generated) titles where you lose but make progress to assist you in making it to "the end"? Okay, this is that, but incredibly abstract and with no explanations given.

A lot of people recommend going into this blind. I'm gonna break this down into two tiers of review: one that's incredibly minimalist and gives away as little as possible, and one that'll be more detailed for the curious who give no heed about spoilers.

THE BRIEF REVIEW: Game only uses a few keys total. Plant seeds which grow in different ways/have seperate effects based on their color (or shape, if you have colorblind mode on). Your enjoyment will greatly hinge upon how much you want to experiment with this process until you figure basics out. Hint: grow upwards, grow outwards, and remember you can delete blocks beside/below you.

THE SPOILING REVIEW: Seriously, stop reading probably.

Okay anyway.

The game gets a little repetitive as you try to 'grow' Green blocks because they have block seeds in them. Your journeys into the resetting world(s - plural, you need to explore to find new ones) will be based on reaching a black speck in the void to get a key, so you can get inside the structure you've grown, grab the seeds, and use the gate at the bottom to make it 'home' with your haul. Use those to grow out the permanent structure, and find new places/some worldbuilding text.

Do this for a while, blindly seeking out the next area with whatever construction you create. That's the game, and as far as I can tell, it does not change. I cheated and looked around to see if I had anything new coming and went "I think I'm good here" a few worlds in. Not bad, but decide for yourself if this seems like your bag, spoiler-haver.

I don't see what the big deal is, frankly. Sure, abstract puzzle game is abstract, but I got bored shortly after figuring out what all the various cubes do, some of which are frustratingly detrimental to your attempts to outrun the blackness that consumes everything. I tried building outwards and upwards, but the game doesn't incentivize... anything, really. Just monotonous, RNG-based attempts to try to farm cubes back up to try to build far out for... some reason, until the blackness eats the cube you're standing on and you have to start over.

It doesn't really evoke the wonders of exploration in the way, say, Antichamber does, which is also artsy, but continuously confronting you with new and novel things and making you wonder what's around the next corner. This game appears to be one vast expanse of jack squat. It feels to me like a test model for a game's systems, but then they forgot to put the actual game in.

The initial lure of this game is the sense of wonder and curiousity. It's so simple at a glance. Surely it's like the other puzzle games; a mystery upon the surface, but a series of sensical conclusions once you get beneath the ephemeral introduction (which serves as both the opening lines to the story and your tutorial). Upon diving into the deep end (for one cannotbe thrown), you find that you truly are an explorer in a vast unknown.

There are no hints. There are no suggestions. You will fail and you will learn. For every step forward, you will make one (or two) back. Just as you have that 'ah-ha!' moment, you will encounter another wall to be scaled. Just as you think you have the very next solution, you will realize you forgot something.

Dive into Starseed Pilgrim, approach it like something wholly new. You are a pilgrim. You are an adventurer. Keep your eyes open: nothing should be ignored, even if you've seen it a dozen times before.

And when you -- inevitably -- fail, pick yourself back up and try again.

Starseed Pilgrim is a game that is all about figuring things out. Upon starting the game up for the first time you're thrown right into the game with not a single instruction on how to proceed--no menus, no starting screen, no tutorials...straight into the thick of it you go! I want to stop short of calling Starseed Pilgrim a block based sandbox game, but the basic gameplay mechanic is about "growing" blocks so you can travel around the gameworld. To this extent the game is focused on exploration and growth, opposed to more classical examples of sandbox games where the emphasis is on the destrution and reconstruction of the game world. In Starseed Pilgrim the player instead must use their resources to reach new levels within the hub world. Each of these levels is similar in design, yet each offers a unique twist on the mechanics of gameplay. The goal is the same in each however, exit the level naturally with as many "seeds" as you can, allowing you to continue to grow pathways in your hub world.

Since Starseed Pilgrim is all about figuring things out on your own, I'm afraid to say too much. What I am confident in saying is that I'm having a lot of fun with Starseed Pilgrim, the fusion of exploration and a zen-like puzzle/building style of gameplay make it a very enjoyable game to just sit back, relax, and enjoy. My initial impression of the game was a bit hazy as I played through the "figure-things-out-for-yourself" phase, but once I got through the first hour I became quite hooked with game--it quickly turned into something I wanted to play all the time.

It's not for everyone, true enough, but for those who find the concept interested will undoubtedly feel it a rewarding game to play. It's simple in nature, but can offer complexity to those who wish to master it. Don't stop playing too early, as it's never clear what you need to do to win. If you're looking for something a little different with a little price, take a look at Starseed Pilgrim!

This is a devious little puzzle game. You are trapped and must find your way home. But to do so, you must plant and harvest seeds to grow different types of paths. And if that isn't tricky enough, you must also collect keys to open doors when the world inverts, shifting from light and color to dark and filled with stars.

The clues to what you need to do are subtle. So subtle that some people might not get them at first. They appear as poems written on the walls of the level. But even without the poems, the longer you play the more you figure out.

There are two types of seeds that are very important. Pink seeds grow pink paths and when you harvest the pink blocks, you gain more seeds to grow more paths. However, the pink seeds grow very slowly. Green grass seeds sprout areas that have hearts in them. When the world inverts those hearts will turn into stars, which you can harvest to use for seeds back in the main world. Each type of seed creates a different type of path with different properties.

Getting to the first two levels is easy. The third level requires collecting three keys and going through a door locked by three keys - which aren't all that easy to find.

The music is interesting, as each seed grows with a different tune, making for changing sounds throughout the game.

If you like devious spacial-awareness puzzles, I recommend spending time to try to figure this one out.

Yet another indie game where the developer had a single barely fleshed out idea for a gameplay mechanic and then couldn't be bothered to create any actual meaningful gameplay or narrative or anything compelling at all, then just filled the rest of the game with minimal effort "artsy" aesthetics and vague, nauseatingly pretentious statements that mean nothing at all.